John Wall Aiming to Reach the NBA Finals Next Season

Washington Wizards All-Star point guard John Wall is an unflinchingly confident young man. Having reached the Playoffs last season for the first time in his nascent NBA career – before getting eliminated in six games by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals – Wall says his goal next year is to get the Wiz back into the Finals for the first time since 1979. Per the WaPo:

“The Finals. All you can ask for now is the Finals,” Wall said from Team USA training camp in Las Vegas when asked for his goals for the upcoming season. “We’ve been to the second round. We know what it takes to win. We know what we need to do. We know everybody needs to get better individually, and I think [the front office] just did a great job of adding pieces, great veteran guys that know what it takes to win.”

“We’re definitely going to be more than ready going into the season, and we’re definitely going to show up,” (Bradley) Beal said. “We know we always want to continue to get better and better every year. Last year, we got a great taste of the playoffs, made it to the second round. We were this close from the Eastern Conference finals, so hopefully, that’ll be our goal this year is to get there and then we’ll see where it goes. We definitely want to get back to that second round, but we definitely want to take it one step at a time.”

“It helps us in our division, so we can get a top-three seed and homecourt advantage,” Wall said of (LeBron) James’s move to the Central Division. “We still got to battle it out with Charlotte, but we knew it was always going to be tough getting No. 1 in our division with Miami being at the top the whole time. We know they’re not the same team, but they’re still talented. We got great veteran guys that’s going to come in and push all of us.”